To give a quick primer to people who would be tempted to only comment on the title, the issue with using plants for carbon sequestration is that they are a temporary sink. Plants use the atmosphere carbon to grow and that carbon is then released when the plants die and is decomposed.
So if you want to sequester more carbon than currently you need to either: have more plants or slow down plants decomposition.
Multiple ways exist to do that. Reforestation is one. A promising one is to farm algae which grow quite fast and either bury them in arid places, deeply submerge them or use them to recreate peat bogs. Another one is to augment the amount of decaying organic matter in the soil. This can be achieved either through change to how we farm or the article presents a project to use GMO crops with roots engineered for mass and slow decay.
The field is both promising and fascinating. It’s probably never going to be a panacea but everything that helps should be investigated.
So if you want to sequester more carbon than currently you need to either: have more plants or slow down plants decomposition.
Multiple ways exist to do that. Reforestation is one. A promising one is to farm algae which grow quite fast and either bury them in arid places, deeply submerge them or use them to recreate peat bogs. Another one is to augment the amount of decaying organic matter in the soil. This can be achieved either through change to how we farm or the article presents a project to use GMO crops with roots engineered for mass and slow decay.
The field is both promising and fascinating. It’s probably never going to be a panacea but everything that helps should be investigated.